


Knockin' On Heaven's Door

by Safiyabat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Heaven, Major character death - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-05 10:12:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3116276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Safiyabat/pseuds/Safiyabat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After her death, Madison went to Purgatory.  Suddenly, she found herself removed from Purgatory.  This is the story of where she went, who brought her out, who she met and why she was saved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Knockin' On Heaven's Door

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SweetSamOfMine (AudreeJo)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AudreeJo/gifts).



> This is based on this ask and response from last night on tumblr:
> 
> http://safiyabat.tumblr.com/post/107073059903/what-would-be-the-best-possible-ending-for-sam
> 
> It is also a gift for SweetSamOfMine; Happy New Year to one of my favorite people!

Madison came to in a field of sunflowers. The last thing she remembered was dying bloody, ripped apart by the claws of something she couldn’t even identify (not that she had much basis for comparison.) Its claws had ripped through her abdomen and its razor-sharp teeth had torn out her throat and she’d wound up bleeding out onto the washed-out grass of Purgatory. It wasn’t the first time that happened, and she didn’t expect that it would be the last. She’d asked Sam to put a bullet into her heart and he had, both of them believing that he was saving her. 

Maybe he had, in one sense. She wasn’t harming innocent people anymore, that much was certain. Anyone who came to Purgatory was a monster, just like her, and apparently after death monsters came here to fight, and fight, and fight some more. Forever. 

Once, she was pretty sure, Dean Winchester himself had been the one to give her a few moments of blessed rest. He’d taken her head off with some kind of crude blade he’d fashioned from the materials available here. But if he was here then he was a monster too, just like the vampire hanging around a foot or two behind him, and if he recognized her it didn’t have any effect on his actions. 

And every time she died in Purgatory was the same: she got some rest, a few moments or a few hours, there was no time here so it made no difference, and she was back. This time was different. 

The first difference she picked up on was the sunshine warming her body. There was no true sunlight in Purgatory. There was only this pathetic twilight thing that offered no warmth and no real light. Here, though, the sun warmed her as though she’d just fallen asleep sunning herself in Golden Gate Park. When she opened her eyes she found the sunflowers, and that was the second signal that something had changed as drastically as it was possible for things to change. There were beautiful things in Purgatory, sure. They were beautiful in their ferocity, in their damage, and you could take a few seconds in the moments before they killed you (or before you killed them) to appreciate their form or their color or their scent. But nothing was simply beautiful and you certainly couldn’t sit there and just enjoy it. These were simply… they were simply beautiful, and she lost herself for a moment simply gazing at them. 

Then she remembered herself and hauled herself to her feet. She couldn’t afford to waste time gaping at pretty flowers. Something was going to come and tear her apart if she didn’t keep moving. 

“It’s okay, Madison. You’re not in Purgatory. You’re safe here.”

She jumped and spun around, realizing that she was in her fully human form for the first time in… well, forever, really. “What are you?” she half growled at the tall, tanned blonde before her. 

The woman moved forward, hands still at her sides. “I’m a human soul – dead, have been for nine or ten years, give or take. My name is Jess Moore, and you’re in Heaven.” She smiled widely and gestured – slowly and smoothly, so as not to provoke Madison. “Welcome home.” 

Madison snorted. “Werewolves don’t go to Heaven.”

“Not ordinarily, no. But Death pulled some strings, and what He wants He pretty much gets.” She shrugged. “I mean, you don’t get your own Heaven, it’s true. That’s not something that the physics of this place are prepared to accommodate. But it’s better than Purgatory, right?” 

Madison took a deep breath, inhaled and exhaled. Her instincts, the same ones that told her that she could trust a shaggy-haired young man with sunflower eyes and a beautiful smile, told her that Jess spoke the truth. And she could feel the peace of this place already starting to seep into her pores. “But why me? There are plenty of other people down there who didn’t chose what happened to them, plenty of other people who deserve it more than me.”

Jess laughed, but gently. “You sound like him.”

“Him?”

“Madison, Death didn’t so much go looking for a random werewolf to raise from werewolf Hell. He was building a new Heaven for someone, a man who loved you when you were alive. Something happened to his previous Heaven when he – well. Anyway. So He rebuilt it and is filling it with people he loves and who love him. With their consent, of course. “Most of us still have our own Heavens, of course. They’re all linked through a place called the Roadhouse. I’ll take you there when you’re ready. But Death asked me to help him build the Heaven, and you don’t have a specific Heaven. So we’re a little different.” She gestured. “This is going to be the center of his Heaven. It’s not a memory; I just think it’s peaceful and happy. He needs that after everything he’s gone through. Plus, sunflowers kind of remind me of him.” 

“They only really remind me of one person,” Madison blurted, not sure why she was trusting this Jess person enough to talk with. 

“Let me guess – maybe six foot four, needs to eat something, hair’s kind of floppy, smile that could light up all of Palo Alto – when you can get him to stop thinking so much, that is.” Jess giggled a little when Madison started. “Yeah – Sam. Same guy. We lived together in college, right up until the day I died.” 

Madison gasped, hand over her mouth. “Oh my Go- I mean, I’m sorry. I don’t want to – I mean, I’m sorry. This is so awkward.” Jess had been dead, so what she and Sam had hadn’t been wrong, but somehow it still didn’t feel great when she was staring at the prior girlfriend. 

Jess tilted her head to the side. “Really? I don’t feel awkward at all. I was dead. I would never want him to be lonely, certainly not as lonely as he was and still is. You made him happy, Maddy. It was a short time, but you made him happy and he loved you. He loved me too. It’s why we’re here. I’m not about to get all caught up in ideas about who has the best ‘claim’ on him, you know? It’s Heaven.” 

Madison breathed in, breathed out again, and met her companion’s eyes. “We both love Sam,” she decided. “And he loves us. I suspect we’ve got a lot in common besides. There’s no reason for two women like us to compete over him when he’s not even here. We’re adults. We can work together to make Sam happy.”

“And each other,” Jess corrected with a grin. “It’s Heaven for us too. We’ve earned it.” 

*

For a while Madison stuck to the field of sunflowers. It was nice there – safe, calm, and Madison needed to learn how to be safe and calm before she could be any good for Sam or these “others” that Jess spoke about. Jess seemed to get it somehow, even though she’d never been to Purgatory. She said that Death had shown her so now she could see and understand some of what she’d endured and that – well, that made some sense, she supposed. 

The blonde came to talk to her every day. She asked Madison what she liked and she brought it – pretty dresses instead of what she’d been wearing when she woke up here, big thick books to get lost in, a tablet that showed Days of our Lives so she could get caught up just because she wanted to. She told her stories about Sam before he got into monster hunting, or back into monster hunting they supposed. “He was so sweet,” she reminisced, “but there was this side of him, you know? Like, I remember this one time when Brady did something to piss him off and he very patiently super-glued every single one of his textbooks to the shelf.” A shadow passed over her face at the name Brady, and Madison reached out to put a hand on her arm.

“This ‘Brady,’” she asked. “Did he hurt you?”

She bit one of her full, generous lips. “Yeah – he, uh, he did. Killed me, in fact. Turns out he was a demon, or possessed by one. Kept saying, ‘The real Brady? He’s in here screaming.’ So I guess it wasn’t his fault. Didn’t make much of a difference to me at the time, I still wound up with my gut split open and burning to death on the ceiling.” She seemed to force herself to speak calmly. “But hey – I’m all better now.” 

“Did you know him before?” 

“Oh yeah. Sam’s best friend – more than that, really. Tell me, how did you guys meet?” 

A sore subject, then. And Madison couldn’t really blame her for that. Heaven was nice and beautiful and pacifying and everything, but her death had been slow and terrible. “He was hunting a werewolf,” she laughed. “Yeah. Turns out it was two werewolves – the one who bit me and, well, me. I had no idea that I was doing what I was doing, but Sam tried to keep me safe right up until…” “Until the end.” 

She nodded. “He was like that. Never could stand to see someone he loved suffer.” 

Madison blushed. “Listen, was he really kind of… awkward…. about showing you that he was interested? Because I thought I was going to have to literally club him over the head with a giant heart or something.” 

“Oh my God, after B- after we were introduced it was like pulling teeth out of concrete to even get him to make eye contact with me!” Jess rolled her magnificent eyes. “You can’t believe it! Well, I guess you can.” 

“But then, once you managed to get the message through –“ Madison grinned. 

“Once he managed to grasp that there was mutual attraction –“ Jess added, pink overtaking her cheeks with her wicked smile. 

Madison shook her head. “If he’d ever decided to use his looks, his charisma, he’d have taken over the world.”

“Yeah, but he didn’t want to,” Jess reminded her. 

Madison lay back in the field and made a contented sound in the back of her throat. Jess lay beside her as Madison said, “That’s why we love him.”

*

After a little while Madison felt ready to meet the “others,” and Jess took her by the hand and brought her to the Roadhouse. The place was a dive bar, a recreation of a place that Sam had known in life. Someplace he’d known in life and liked, she reminded herself, looking around as her heels echoed on the pine plank floor. 

The first person to greet them ran up on four legs, not two. The golden retriever sniffed her eagerly and leaned on her with affection and intent, accepting scritches from Jess and surprised pats from Madison. “This is Bones,” the former explained. “He was Sam’s dog when he ran away one time when he was a teenager. He’s pretty friendly, although the one time an angel stuck its head in here he got a little growly.” 

Madison felt her eyebrows draw together. “What exactly do you have to do to get a golden retriever pissed off at you?” 

“Sam doesn’t have a good relationship with angels,” answered a mullet-wearing man with a big watch and a denim vest. The guy looked like he’d jumped right out of a bad eighties video. “The name’s Ash.” 

“Madison.” She offered a tentative hand, which Ash took and turned into a welcoming embrace that managed to be not even remotely creepy. 

“Welcome to the Roadhouse Part Two, Maddy,” he greeted, retreating behind the bar. “What’s your poison? We got Bud and Bud Light, but it’s Heaven. You want Sierra Nevada or some such thing you can make that happen.” 

“How about a pair of Cosmos, Ash?” Jess requested, exchanging glances with Madison. 

“I knew you two would be thick as thieves,” he grumbled. “You’re gonna have our precious little Sammy drinking Cosmos next thing we know.”

“Gin and Tonic,” Jess offered. “But only very late, when we were in for the night and he was absolutely sure we were safe.” 

“Figures.” Ash took a lot less time to make a pair of Cosmos than it should have, but Madison couldn’t complain about the taste.

“So, were you Sam’s bartender or something?” Madison wondered, sipping from her drink. 

“Nah, we were friends. I lived at the Roadhouse, helped him out with a few things. He was the only person I could talk to without having to turn the dial down a few notches, you know? ‘Cept for Jess here, of course. She might be even smarter than him.” 

“Ash is the one who taught me how to hack Heaven,” Jess explained. “Which is how I managed to build a new one for Sam after the old one was destroyed.” 

“You hacked Heaven.” Madison rolled her eyes. “Of course.”

“Hey –“ Jess nudged her elbow. “Sam doesn’t easily cope with people who aren’t every bit as smart as he is, okay? Relax.” 

An older woman walked in from what looked like it had to be a back room or something. She gave Madison a gentle, beaming smile and came around the bar to wrap her arms around her. “Well, now, you must be Madison,” she greeted in a Midwestern twang. “I have to say that I am real glad to meet you, sweetie. You’re everything Sam said you were.” 

“Sam talked to you about me?” Madison shook her head, blinking. “Oh, sure honey. The poor boy’s heart was broken nearly in two, again. I didn’t know him when you died, honey,” she said to Jess, “but I’d imagine he was a real wreck. But he sure was broken up about you. I’m glad you’re able to be up here with us. Have a seat. Let me grab you a bite to eat.” Madison didn’t need anything to eat, but she let the motherly woman bring her and Jess bowls of chili anyway. When she took a seat across from them, a Cosmo of her own in her hand, no one complained.

“Ellen is the proprietor of this here establishment,” Ash explained. 

“You bet your ass I am,” she retorted. “There’s another, mirror version on the other side of the wall. It’s a gathering place for the souls of those hunters that’ve made it to Heaven; believe it or not, most don’t. But Death decided that Sam needed his own version and I can’t say as I blame Him.” 

“He’ll be free to go visit the other one,” Jess explained. “But this one is his.”

“Damn straight,” grunted a skinny Asian kid who needed a haircut and a shave. The guy walked up to the space behind the bar and poured his own whiskey. “Hi everyone.” 

“Kevin,” Jess warned. 

“Sorry.” He turned around and offered his hand to Madison. “My name’s Kevin. I’m the most recently deceased here. I lived with Sam and Dean in the Bunker; he was like an older brother to me.” 

“I’m Madison. I was his girlfriend, briefly.”

Jess cleared her throat. “The amount of time doesn’t matter, Maddy. He loved us both.” 

Kevin seemed to be doing some kind of mental math. “Are you the reason he doesn’t want to go to San Francisco?” 

She felt herself blushing. “Maybe? I hope he’d go back, it’s a great city.” 

“Yeah, well.” He gave a little grin. “Sam gets attached, you know?” 

Two more figures walked in, together, talking animatedly with each other. One was dressed in a suit with a tie and even a hat. The other wore almost as many layers as Sam himself and looked kind of like he might live out of a van. “Andy and Henry,” Jess grinned, calling them over. Henry turned out to be the more formal of the two. “Andy is a friend of Sam’s from a case –“

“Who is totally right about Kant –“ the smaller male interrupted, widening his eyes and rocking up onto his toes. 

“And Henry is Sam’s grandfather.” 

Madison gasped. “Sam said he didn’t have any grandparents.” 

“Well, at the time he didn’t, ma’am.” Henry took off his hat and set it on the bar, accepting the glass of whiskey that Ellen passed to him with a smile and a gentle touch to her shoulder. “There was a time travel spell gone awry –“ 

“That’s a thing?” Madison whispered to Jess. 

“Apparently,” her friend whispered back. 

“-and I had the chance to meet him. And I have to say that while I’m not thrilled with my son’s decision to raise the boys as hunters, I could not be more proud of the man Sam became.” He beamed as the small crowd nodded. Even Bones wagged his furry tail. 

The group began to relax, laughing and getting to know Madison and letting her get to know them. Kevin seemed a little surly at first but underneath that he turned out to be almost as funny as Sam, and almost as smart. Andy was all energy and brilliance, and he and Ash could sit there and debate well into the night. Henry and Ellen seemed to maybe have a thing going, maybe, just a little. Maybe it had more to do with being the most “grown up” of all the revelers. Bones brought them toys, and Madison couldn’t even spare a moment to feel bad about why she knew what the dog wanted more easily than the others when he seemed so happy to get play time or scritches when he wanted them. 

After a while – as with most things in Heaven, Madison lost track of time here – Jess stopped moving. “It’s time,” she told them, bubbling over with excitement. “He’s here!” She rushed over to grab Madison’s hand as a bright, pure light flared against the windows and doors, too bright for any kind of color description. After a few seconds, a familiar figure stood outlined against the doorway.

Madison and Jess glanced at each other and grinned. Then they approached him, together.


End file.
